From local studios to global stages, these women artists and designers—image-makers, object-shapers, world-builders—are redefining what it means to make. Through lens, line, and material, they are expanding the visual language of our time. Ahead, meet Aditi Neti, whose work navigates the space between tradition, technology, and tactile human experience.
Aditi Neti describes her practice as existing in a space shaped by cultural hybridity and constant movement between disciplines, perspectives, and ways of seeing.
Growing up in a hybrid household, she learned early how to navigate and translate between worlds. “My parents came from different cultural backgrounds, and English became our shared language, so I learned early on how to move between perspectives,” Neti shares. “I was also surrounded by a family culture rooted in software engineering, while I was drawn to design, so I’ve always been close to technology but from a slightly different angle.” This proximity to both worlds shaped how she sees technology today—not just as a tool, but as something to be interpreted, questioned, and reimagined.
Her formative years in Bangalore sharpened her awareness of how deeply technology is woven into everyday life, while her move to Singapore brought into focus how culture, language, and context continually reshape that experience. Rather than approaching computation through the lens of speed or efficiency, she frames her practice as an attempt to “make it more human through design,” positioning technology as something that can be read, negotiated, and collaborated with. This sensibility led her to identify as a creative technologist—a term she feels captures “that in-between space [she] think [she] occupies.”
Her work often begins not with a medium, but with a question. One such question surfaced during a quiet Deepavali, when she turned to creative coding to explore how kolams—a traditional South Indian form of geometric floor art drawn at the entrance of homes—and rangolis—a vibrant, traditional Indian folk art filled with colourful powders, flower petals, and diyas—might be generated procedurally.
“At first, I was drawn to their logic and structure, but over time I realised that so much of their value lies in the process, in the repetition, gesture, time, and care of making. That became the starting point for this line of research: wondering whether something so embodied and culturally layered could be explored through computation without losing what gives it meaning.”
That inquiry continues in Of Curves and Hands, a project that asks whether something as embodied and culturally layered as kolam-making can be translated through computation without losing what gives it meaning. Developed through her research as a Design Research Fellow at the Singapore Art Museum under Anatomy of a Kolam, and presented at Milan Design Week 2026 as part of Prototype Island, an exhibition that frames Singapore as a living laboratory of innovation, the work explores the tension between tradition and automation. It positions the machine not as a replacement for the human hand, but as a participant in a shared act of making.
“Of Curves and Hands is part of my ongoing exploration of how culturally rooted practices can be translated through technology without losing their embodied, emotional, and ritual depth,” she explains. “The work asks whether a machine can participate in an act of making without erasing the care, gesture, and human intention that give that practice its meaning.”
Across her practice, Neti is attentive to questions of responsibility and representation, approaching cultural knowledge not as material to be extracted, but as something to be learned from. Rather than aligning with narratives of technological novelty or efficiency, her research increasingly orbits around slowness, temporality, living media, and culturally grounded computation. Through these lenses, she is interested in how interactive systems might support more embodied forms of attention, and how materials—digital or physical—might act as collaborators rather than passive substrates.
Ultimately, her work asks what it might mean for technology to participate in cultural practices without flattening them, and how design might open up more meaningful ways of engaging with the world.
Below, Neti shares more about her practice, from cultural hybridity and creative technologist identity to the making of Of Curves and Hands and her ongoing research into slow, culturally grounded computation.
GRAZIA (G): What drew you to identify as a “creative technologist” rather than a designer or artist more traditionally defined?
Aditi Neti (AN): I like to define myself as always under construction! My practice has never sat comfortably in just one space, and I hope it never does: I’m trained in design, and I care deeply about aesthetics, narratives, and human experience, but I’m also constantly working with technological systems as materials and collaborators.
G: Of Curves and Hands sits at an intersection of tradition and automation. How did you decide what role the machine should play versus the human participant?
AN: Whenever I work with technology, I see it as a collaboration with the machine, and also a negotiation of control. In this project, I wanted to preserve human intent, so the machine was never there to replace the participant. Instead, I used hand-tracking to let people create kolams through their own gestures, while the plotters drew them out and also erased them.
That balance felt important to me. The human hand initiates the form, and the machine helps materialise it. The erasing also became part of the meaning, because it reflects the transient and ephemeral nature of kolams. So the work is really about shared authorship, rather than automation alone.
G: When working with culturally significant practices, how do you navigate responsibility and representation?
AN: This whole journey has been, for me, a way to re-engage with kolam-making. The starting point is always that I am here to learn, not to claim authority over the practice. As part of this process, I spoke with women who were known for their kolam practice, and those conversations were important in helping me understand not just the form, but the meanings, values, and lived knowledge around it.
At the same time, I’ve been very careful not to frame this work as a replaceable version of kolam-making. I see it more as an interpretation, a translation, and even a question, rather than a substitute for the practice itself. That distinction matters to me because the work is not trying to replicate the cultural practice in full, but to engage with it respectfully while also reflecting on what happens when it meets computation and technology.
G: Milan Design Week is often described as a place where design trends for the future are shaped. How do you see your work contributing to or challenging those narratives?
AN: I think my work offers a slightly different narrative about the future of design. A lot of design conversations around the future focus on novelty, efficiency, or technological progress, which is amazing! However, I think my work meanders more towards engagement with slow computation, living media, and culturally grounded sensorial practices. For me, that feels like one way design can imagine more thoughtful futures.
I hope it shows that tradition and technology do not have to be opposites, and that the future can also be shaped by things that are embodied, culturally grounded, and deeply human.
G: How do you see your practice evolving—are there other rituals or knowledge systems you’re interested in exploring?
AN: My research questions have really started to centre around three themes: slowness and temporality, living and more-than-human media, and culturally grounded computation. I’m interested in how interactive systems can make space for slower attention, and how living materials might become collaborators rather than just passive materials.
What keeps drawing me back is the question of how technology can work with the richness of cultural practices instead of flattening or overwriting them. I’m not that interested in technology purely for efficiency or solutionism. I care more about whether we can design systems that give people more meaningful ways to communicate and make sense of the world.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA Singapore.
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